This Fruits Basket, Volume 5, is my first Manga/Japanese graphic novel. It took me some time to get used to the mechanics of reading it. I discovered I had to read it from the right to the left, and from the top down. Then I had to get used to the black and white drawings and reading the talking bubbles at the same time as associating their belonging to a character's personality and japanese name.

The story line deals with teenage issues/events and involves Tohru Honda, a teenage girl who is orphaned, but is taken in by the Sohma family. She discovers this family is cursed with a spirit of a Chinese zodiac animal so that if any one of them is weak or hugged by a member of the opposite sex, they turn into their zodiac animal. The volume 5 I read takes Tohru Honda through a chapter of mediating between two friends who dislike/disagree with each other, another chapter coping with heartbreak,and later chapters dealing with teasing and self-esteem, boy infactuations and jealousy, and getting bad grades.

Overall, an interesting read because of the technical mechanics in the reading . The stories deal with issues and events that many people can relate to but has that mystical twist with the zodiac animal coming into play. ( )

http://quettandil.blogspot.com/2007/1... ( )